Amy Tan Quotes

That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming, no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

I did not lose myself all at once.

Fate changes when you change your clothes.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... "Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen."

And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.

You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei

too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

If I look upon my whole life, I cannot think of another time when I felt more comfortable: when I had no worries, fears, or desires, when my life seemed as soft and lovely as lying inside a cocoon of rose silk.

Those who don't heed the warnings don't live to admit they were stupid not to do so.

I hated the tests the raised hopes and failed expectations.

Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.

I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.

What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask.

I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.

Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

Over time, passion wanes, differences don't.

But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying

But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo

Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.

My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.

People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.

I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.